Albert Hoffman At Th' House O' Fun Dept.

Design by False Memory Foam© Art Department O' Art Dept.

"I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like" sang Syd Barrett [lead singer with The Pink Floyds beat group - Ed.] just before he fell off. Albert Hoffman [above - Ed.] is the patron saint of psyclists everywhere, and his game-changing bike ride is celebrated with this scientifically enhanced compilation.

I'm not usually a fan of Various Artists. I find their albums too diverse. But Acid Dreams is an exception. Older UK readers may remember Fun House Records, a grimy bootleg label and collectors' store from England's own Pismo Beach, Margate. They specialized in trampling roughshod over copyright law and reissuing rare albums at the lowest possible quality and selling them at the highest possible price to idiots like me. But at that time, pre-CD, it could be the only way you'd get to hear them. Their masterpiece was in-house comp Acid Dreams, issued in a dull op-art plastic sleeve [not above - Ed.] that was almost worth buying for the smell alone. It was supposed to come in psychedelic swirly vinyl, but mine was just muddy gray. And they said it was a German release, which was a fib, too. D'oh! You guys!

The music was chosen with a razorblade sensibility for the paranoid end of the lysergic market. It has seen numerous bootlegged versions (ironique, non?) over the years. I've pasted in a handful of crucial tracks (including the blindingly great 99th Floor, which improves everything it appears on) that those Fun House rascals didn't have room for. Or forgot. Or something.

Positioned nicely between the "smoother" sounds of Lenny Kaye's Nuggets and the gritty barrel-scrapings of similar efforts, it's the only psych comp that made the leap to my hand-held device of choice, and you might just dig it. Because it's keen!

 

This barn find post has been sensitively resto-modded to increase its investment value.

SERIOUSLY! DON'T MISS THIS! Dept. Thirty Blue, The Director's Cut Remix Reference Copy

"Why, this remix is th' ginchiest!" avers Rholonne Déodoranté, th' IoF©'s Diversity Outreach Consultant. Note bold seasonal Yultide attire!

 

The latest version (5 - Ed.) of Thirty Minutes Beyond The Blue Horizon did everything I wanted except sound as good as I wanted. A pal has bestowed his considerable tech smarts - of which I is sadly bereft - on what I thought was a sonically fucked file, basically, seeing as how I'd overlaid track upon track in my blind quest for narrative coherence and mystic transubstantiation. The remix is profound, revelatory, much better than I'd thought possible. There are actual dynamics! Tonal range! The thing shines like china! Sparkles like Japan! Grab it, trash the rest. It's not like you have to actually do anything except exercise your click finger, fercrissakes. You don't even got to lissen to th' sucker! Just download it and keep it in yer undies drawer! This is the last time you'll see it here, and it's a treat for th' ears. Th' eschaton has been imanentized!

 

My thanks to Archie Valparaiso. Dude.

Merrell Fankhauser's Mystic Clam Of Mu Dept.

In my wanderings in search of the strange, the weird, and the unearthly, the story of Merrell Fankhauser's Mystic Clam Of Mu ranks as one of the strangest, the weirdest, and the unearthliest [is this a word? - Ed.].  Come with me now into the realms of the strange, the weird, and the unearthly, as I recount a tale so strange, so weird, so unearthly I would scarcely give it creedence were it not for the fact I witnessed it with my own eyes! Kindly wishes, Your Host, Farquhar Throckmorton III

 

 

Lancelot "Lance" Steele was born in 1943 to Charles and Elizabeth Steele, respectively Professor Emeritus of Classical Literature at Yale, and first viola with the New York Philharmonic. As a young teen Lance developed a passion for rock and roll, but when he told his parents he wanted to quit high school to devote himself to his band Lancelot And The Knights, they would only allow it on one condition; he must change his name. Neither wanted the respected Steele family name associated with such a "transient vulgar fad".

Stately Steele Manor

With a mischievous sense of humor, his parents wrote unlikely names on slips of paper and asked young Lance to choose one from a top hat. The result, Merrell Fankhauser, should have been ridiculous enough to make him give up any idea of becoming a rock and roll star, but if anything it strengthened his resolve. The Impacts, once Lancelot And The Knights, now Merrell And The Exiles, moved to California where their wholesome good looks and happening teenbeat sounds soon garnered them a residency at prestigious Pismo Beach teen hangout The Clam House [later demolished to make way for MrDave's Fish Head Incinerator - Ed.].

From here, the story takes an almost unbelievable turn. In an interview with The Pismo Persuader, Merrell recounts the event that would change his life:

"We were taking a break from filming a scene for the new Fabian movie Teen Clambake From Mars, and I was walking along the oceanside when a giant glowing clam descended from the sky and spoke to me. It said Merrell, do some drugs, which to be honest I already was, but also Merrell, return to the lost continent of Mu, which I never heard of. And this glowing book like floated down from the clam, which had disappeared, and there it was on the sand next to a Thermos and a pair of huaraches. And a towel. The book [left - Ed.] felt strangely warm, like it fell out a glowing clam. I took it back to the movie set where I read it while Fabian learned his line, which was, gee whiz is this clam ever salty!" 

The rest is history. Fabian became a lush and married a Bituminious Coal Queen. The Exiles changed their name to Fapardokly, a Muvian deity, and two of the band members changed their names to Drumbo and Antennae Jimmy Semens. They cut a half-assed album before changing their name to Merrell Fankhauser And His Trusty HMS Bounty and cutting a swell album before moving to Maui and changing their name to Mu and cutting a swell album which like the lost continent itself sank without trace, only to wash up decades later on Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©!

 

What have these albums in common?

 

... read the comments for the astonishing answer!

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Is Anyone Listening Any More? Dept. - Quicksilver

Note compositional balance. Note harmonious color palette. Note integration of text and image.

The reason I ax is that I had a Thirty Minutes project in mind featuring Quicksilver, but on re-listening to their œuvre [Fr. egg - Ed.] it's apparent that everything anyone in their right mind wants to listen to again is on their first two albums, which are eternally groovy.

The first album [left - Ed.] is what we long-playing record enthusiasts call "underrated", but it's only underrated by them as ain't heard it. There's just not enough people what have. You can put this down to it being released a critical few months too late. A '67 release would have ridden the wave of debuts from Country Joe And His Fishes, The Moby Grapes, The Door, The Grateful Deads, and breakthru second albums from Jefferson And His Airplanes and The Springfield Buffaloes, when it would have had more impact. The downer cover did them no favors, neither nohow. Yes, I know, you like it, Rick Griffin, classic elegance etc. etc. but that funereal black ran not only counter to the times but also the music. It suited the godawful Velvet Undergrounds, but otherwise you're taking a risk. No girl other than a depressed junkie girl would find that somber shit attractive ("what's that icky thing like an exploded rib cage?"), and girls' instincts are sometimes on the money. Musically, the album's a real achievement; some half-way great songs, and swell playing woven into unusually disciplined structure - in some ways the album prefigures prog.

The breakthru second album [left - Ed.] got everything right. A glorious cover from George Hunter, shewn here in an accurate color balance because this stuff matters. '69 was Second Wave San Francisco; Santana, It's A Beautiful Day, and countless other bands that surfaced in the polychrome wake of '67. Happy Trails was avant-garde nostalgia, not only recalling the days of th' Old West, but the blissfully tripped-out San Francisco that was already a tourist attraction. Live Dead had the same elegiac vibe. Happy Trails' smartest trick was the seamless mix of live and studio. There is no better record of the Fillmore's imperial years than the extended Who Do You Love, which for my money out-deads The Dead with it's integral audience participation and absolute joyous freedom of expression. It renders all the later live Quicksilver recordings - of which there is slewage - inessential at best, disposable at worst. The studio tracks are up to the standard of the first album, falling short of greatness while remaining strangely wonderful.

From here on, it was diminishing returns. Shady Grove has its fans, but if I want to hear piano (which I don't) I won't listen to a guitar band. And the return of Dino Valenti ushered in a string of interchangeably barely-okay albums with degraded coloring book cover art. Not terrible, and that's the best I can say of them. A (too-) late reformation album in '75 fercrissakes showed them to be a little like The Eagles but without memorable songs, and who needed to see that happen? None.

 

This post completed under the pressure of anticipated breakfast.

Susanna Hoffs Dept. - Who Will She Be?

You'll know Ms. Hoffs from her all-too frequent appearances on Fabulous False Memory Foam Island©, but did you know she's also an accomplished artiste with many recordings, both as part of girlie "punk" group The Bananaramas and solo, with other people? Me neither, until she parachuted in yestiddy with a bunch of rekkids under her arm! We relaxed poolside whilst [grammar - Ed.] Kreemé [below left and eighteen my ass - Ed.] served her signature brake fluid n' guano smoothies!

FT3 (studying Killer Sudoku) I'll be honest, Ms. Hoffs, but your constant reappearances here seem to suggest some kind of unhealthy obsession on your part. Yes, I took you beyond the limits of passion on a wild ride to the shores of ecstasy and taught you how to feel fully a woman for the first time in your life - but can you not move on?

SH Which I'm here to ax you a favor, Farq, and for once it ain't physical. 

FT3 That's a relief. A guy needs time to hisself, consarn it. How can I help?

SH It's my new album. It's got some great, sorry, swell songs on it, recorded back in 1999.

FT3 Wait - you made an album? Like a record?

Smoothie, anyone?

SH (wrinkles nose appealingly) Sure - another one? But I'm unhappy with the title, and the cover could do with a little nuance. Which you got out th' ass. Here -

FT3 Oh dear. The Lost Album? Seriously? How very original. And inaccurate. Should be The Found Album. Name it after a song, why don'cha.

SH What, like In The Year 2525?

FT3 Well, a song on the album, preferably.

SH Will you choose one for me? Couldja huh wouldja?

FT3 (sighs) How about Who Will She Be? Goes nicely with the image.

SH Love it! LOVE it!! Can you sprinkle some fairy dust on th' pitcher? Pretty please?

FT3 (whips out wax crayons, makes a few deft strokes) Voilà. And I made the font all lower case, which has a cooler look.

SH Why, Farq *snurfle* that's beautiful! *sob* How can I ever repay you?

[tape mercifully runs out at this point - Ed.]

 

This post funded in part by the Alfred E. Neuman For President (1955) Campaign